Co-Orienting the Object: An Activity-Theoretical Analysis of the UK’s National Program for Information Technology

This paper contributes to research on the success and failure of information and communication technologies (ICT) by focusing on the learning processes associated with the development of new ICT projects and the way they challenge and extend familiar
organizational limits. Drawing on recent developments in activity theory, we provide an analysis of oral and written evidence
taken before a House of Commons Committee in relation to the UK’s National Program for IT (NPfIT). Our preliminary findings
point to the ways in which new objects of activity such as the NPfIT can emerge from the meeting of contrasting forms of discursive
activity, as well as how new policy insights can be translated into new organizational practices. We conclude with some implications
for further research.